What does it say about the tea parties that Romney is the likely nominee?

Romney appears to be the more likely Republican nominee day by day. Looking at the Alabama and Mississippi polls as well, it appears that Romney has
become very competitive in even those conservative states, more so than I would have expected against the likes of Gingrich. In Mississippi Romney is
even pulling an early lead at the moment. I understand this could all change in a matter of days, but a person like Romney should never be performing
so strongly in a solid red tea party state the likes of Mississippi: www.realclearpolitics.com...

I'm just wondering, given the 2009 and 2010 movements by tea partiers to purge the republican party of moderates, to purify the party, to rid
establishment republicans, what has happened to this movement in this election cycle? Romney is far from meeting even the minimalist standards set by
the tea parties and he is by all means among the established in the party. What's happening? Is it that tea partiers are not as influencial in the
GOP as it's so often claimed? Or have tea partiers stood behind Romney all this time and it's a necessary sacrifice of key principals against Obama?

What will it say about the tea parties if they all get behind a candidate like Romney this election cycle? And I have no doubt they will, a brokered
convention is very unlikely despite the hopes of many conservatives sorry. For me it demonstrates that the tea parties were and have always been an
astroturf movement hyped up by the republican establishment. I'm sure many self described tea partiers over here have a different explanation? I'd
love to hear it because I have no doubt that Romney won't even have to lift a finger to court the tea party vote if he is nominated.

IMHO the Tea Party was a reaction to the overbearing tactics of Obama when Democrats controlled House and Senate. The last 2 years Obama has been
forced to be more conciliatory and this has reduced the anger and shock that fuelled the Tea Party. Also the Republicans that were elected seem to
have done nothing inspiring.

What does it say about the Tea Party when they spurned their own spiritual guru Ron Paul in favor of banker elitist Mitt Romney? But then again the
televised version of the Tea Party was just a faux movement financed by FOX "news" and the Kochs. The real TP was hijacked and marginalized by the
mainstream GOP.

Originally posted by FreedomXisntXFree
The Tea party pisses me off because you'd think they would be supporting Ron Paul.

Yes, I'm not a fan of Paul at all, personally I'd rather back Romney if I had to choose, but then again I'm not a tea partier. The tea parties did
first start under Paul's 2007/2008 presidential campaign, so what's the deal? Romney??

It goes to show that the organization of any party wether it be the tea party, or democrat party or republican party... becomes infiltrated with the
Establishments pawns and becomes corrupted and fouled.

Your right Ron Paul should be right up on the list at number one for the Tea Party..

For example Anon... great idea but corrupted for a long time by the Establishment all the while they are in control of the leaders and still they push
fearmongering on the public so they can pass laws to restrict everything.

The Tea Party is alive and well....as it's been all this time. They aren't a part of the Republican Party though, and the Republican Party sure
agrees. I think this race was pretty well stacked and rigged from the start and Romney was the man clear back before the first primary or caucus was
held. Perhaps, this was in direct response to the power TPM showed for the midterms and cleaning the clock on BOTH parties to different degrees.

TPM sure did drop the ball on this though....they waited entirely too long to do anything, and it's far too late now. Half the decent people were run
out or scandal'ed out of the race quite awhile ago.

Out of the remaining? Who would the TPM candidate be, anyway? Ron Paul..Perhaps..but as the OP notes..Even TPM seems to carry disdain for Ron Paul.

If they'd have supported him, he wouldn't have been as unelectable as they all claim he is for why they DO NOT support him. What a mess......

So we're left with Dumb (Romney) and Dumber (Obama). Flip a coin. Heads TPTB win. Tails we lose. Ready?

It looks as if the Tea Parties faced the same brick wall as so many social and political movements have over hundreds of years. They were very
effective at opposing and disagreeing with what they saw was wrong, but they have never taken the next step - identifying what they can do to put it
right, and putting their message over to the country at large through choosing and supporting effective candidates. I guess that Bachmann was their
obvious flagbearer, but she never got beyond opposing and disagreeing, either, and could only speak for her own agenda and not for that of her
supporters.

Ron Paul has put a better, clearer agenda, but he's not GOP and he is beyond the party's control. I think he's probably history already.

I can't imagine that any of the other three candidates are what the Tea Parties ever thought they wanted, and I suspect that the religions those
three represent were shared by very few of them, either. If I was a Tea Party activist, I'd be wondering who the heck was going to represent me for
the next few years.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
The Tea Party is alive and well....as it's been all this time. They aren't a part of the Republican Party though, and the Republican Party sure
agrees.

This may be a possibility.... I mean many of primaries have accounted for lower turn out.... but then if this is the case, you'd figure that the tea
parties would sort out their own independent party with their own candidate, but this doesn't seem to be happening? We could say that the tea parties
have become disillusioned with the GOP, but they still reluctantly participate in the eleciton process I guess? I have no doubt that enthusiasm for
Romney is low, but he still has those essential conservatve votes regardless.

Out of the remaining? Who would the TPM candidate be, anyway? Ron Paul..Perhaps..but as the OP notes..Even TPM seems to carry disdain for Ron
Paul.

If they'd have supported him, he wouldn't have been as unelectable as they all claim he is for why they DO NOT support him. What a
mess......

Wrabbit I'm sure you have many friends who are tea partiers, I'm sure a good portion of them did not vote for Ron Paul and instead supported
Gingrich, Santorum, Romney, did you ever ask them why? What answer did you get from them?

As an ex teapartier, well, you all probably know by now I support Ron Paul. So do all the people I teapartied with back in the day. We moved away from
the "movement", around the time Palin started speaking at rallies. Knew the jig was up at that point, abondon ship!

"What does it say about the tea parties that Romney is the likely nominee?"

It says absolutely nothing about the "tea parties", and everything about the "voting" process.

To quote Josef Stalin:
"It's Not the People Who Vote that Count; It's the People Who Count the Votes."

Or, "When you can't win--cheat."

I suspected from the start that Romney would be the "anointed one" for the Repubs, just like I could see early on in the 2008 campaign that Obama
was the "anointed one" as well. It's the same process, doesn't matter whether Repub or Dem; they're two sides of the same coin, and the
mega-corporations and banksters control both sides, as well as the corporate-controlled propaganda machine called "the mainstream media". (NB:
Dictionary definition of Fascism = control of government by corporations.) Just look at their campaign donor lists, as well as the details of the
legislation that they pass--and think about whom that legislation REALLY benefits (hint: it's not you nor the average American, and it's not small
businesses either).

My guess is that the Repubs want Obama to win a 2nd term. Thus Romney as their "pick".

IMO, Romney is essentially an Obama clone, so that once again, when we get our opportunity to "vote" in November, we'll have the same non-choice of
Corrupt Corporate Stooge #1, or Corrupt Corporate Stooge #2. Either way, we lose, and the corporations and banksters win.

Originally posted by NightGypsy
This doesn't say anything about the Tea Party. The only thing it says is that election fraud is alive and well in the U.S.

Election fraud is a very real thing NightGypsy, but come on now, it would take a pritty large conspiracy to fake millions of votes toward one
candidate. Even if we were to take the counties out of the equation where election issues have been reported, Romney would still well in the lead.
There is no doubt that GOPers are backing him more than anybody else, and yet 70% of GOPers have been reported to back the tea parties as well. I
think this is more of a quesiton of why so many GOP voters support him? Especially after the years of tea party influence?

Originally posted by Southern Guardian
Wrabbit I'm sure you have many friends who are tea partiers, I'm sure a good portion of them did not vote for Ron Paul and instead supported Gingrich,
Santorum, Romney, did you ever ask them why? What answer did you get from them?

First, I tend to agree with some of what you said. TPM does seem to have started as a successful protest movement and they gained some real ground in
2010....then, as another poster said, they never took the next step to form up beyond that. I guess there is the formal Tea Party "party" that formed
up with money..but that isn't what comes to mind any more than Soros is when I think of Occupy. If only they could take that next step and go on to
tell the nation what their solutions are.

You're right. I have family that are die hard TPM members and all but disowned me when I got back from Occupy. lol.... Polarization.

It'll be the
end of us. Good ideas die on arrival because of WHO thought them up, not the idea itself.

The reasoning I've gotten when I attempted to explain the virtues of Dr. Paul was based in two areas. First, he's a nut with ideas far too extreme for
the nation...so he's a joke. Not MY words....Their words. Once THAT idea took hold, I've found it impossible to explain that the media tag lines his
own words have become are generally taken FAR from context...or there was quite a bit more to a plan (Like total withdrawal) than MSM said.

The other was pure unelectability. I tried, once again, to point out the Catch-22 here. He's unelectable only because those who would agree, if they
gave the man a fair hearing, won't support him because he doesn't have enough support to support. It's such a circular argument, the debate has never
gone well.

Honestly, I think it says more about the candidates than it does the tea party or anyone else. To Romney's credit, he has been able to hang onto a
core of 25-30%, but he hasn't built on it. Meanwhile, everyone else has had a shot as the frontrunner and failed miserably. Its simply a weak
crop of candidates and the GOP rank and file know it. Aside from perhaps Ron Paul, there's no real reason that a traditional 'tea party'
conservative would vote for any of these guys.

Romney is winning by default. That said, if he can't find a way to bring conservatives on board for the general election, he *will* lose by a
landslide, because they're simply going to stay home.

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